So I'm enjoying Google Sky and I love infrared astronomy, all the back to IRAS in '81. I went to look around the 13th zodiac sign, around Virgo and find this. What the hell? Is this the "dragon' SO many legends and religions speak of? It's said it would return, disguised as a "savior", a "mahdi", or something. I think we're getting blasted by a shower of debris if this thing disrupts the solar system. No wonder Schumaker and Sagan suddenly just "died' at the instant the internet winked on(and they would have RULED the internet).

Best I can determine, this is an anomaly of the optic and software of the type of imagers used. They scan one line of pixels at a time, take many sequences over time, sometimes months or even years apart, to build up an image of the region.

Be very careful about jumping to conclusions, or making interpretations of things like this.